The Dusty Tome

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I had a whole post outlined with all the steps I went through to manually install VirtualBox 3.0 in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, but decided to wait a couple days until 9.10 Karmic came out before finalizing my system setup. As I hoped, it was a piece of cake in Karmic since VirtualBox 3.0 is now listed in the new Ubuntu Software Center!

I just launched the “Ubuntu Software Center” from the Applications menu. When the Software Center opened, I typed “virtualbox” in the search bar in the upper-right corner. “VirtualBox OSE” was listed. (For reference, I later found it under the Accessories category in the Software Center.) I double-clicked on it to get more info, and confirmed that it’s a 3.0+ package (3.0.8 specifically), and clicked the Install button. After entering my password, the Software Center downloaded and installed it without a hitch. Now I can just run Applications -> Accessories -> VirtualBox OSE to launch.

No adding new repositories. No terminal required. It’s almost too easy! Good job, Cannonical.

I recently received my new 1TB hard drive (more storage than I’ve ever had!). I’m hoping to switch to Ubuntu as my main day-to-day OS, but I still want to keep an XP install around for games and other needs, so a dual-boot setup was in order. I’ve set this up before on other machines, but it’s been a while and I’d obviously forgotten a few things. This post is an attempt to capture the process for future reference, so I won’t repeat this yet again in the future.

The first step was to partition my new 1TB hard drive. I used the partition manager on a slipstream WinXP cd to create the following partitions:

2GB NTFS for Windows virtual memory file

2GB Linux Swap

50GB NTFS for Windows System

350GB Ext4 for Ubuntu

100GB NTFS for Windows program installs

450GB NTFS for shared media

Obviously I only sized the two Linux partitions here since XP doesn’t know about Linux Swap or Ext4. After installing Windows to the 50GB NTFS partition, I booted into Windows to be sure everything was working. It was. Next I popped in the fresh and shiny burned Ubuntu 9.10 disc and installed to the 350GB partition. Install went fine, and after rebooting I was presented with a Grub prompt asking which system I’d like to load. I chose Ubuntu, and it loaded fine. I then rebooted, chose Windows XP at the Grub prompt, and was presented with the following error:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \system\hal.dll

I started to get this vague feeling like I’d been here before… After a bit of googling (booting back into Ubuntu), I remembered that WinXP needs to be installed on a primary partition. Check here for a primer in primary, extended, and logical partitions. Apparently, the XP install disk’s partition manager creates the first new partition as a primary, and any partitions created after that are added as logical partitions on a single extended partition. So my partition table looked like this:

[primary] 2GB NTFS for Windows virtual memory file

[extended]

[logical] 2GB Linux Swap

[logical] 50GB NTFS for Windows System

[logical] 350GB Ext4 for Ubuntu

[logical] 100GB NTFS for Windows program installs

[logical] 450GB NTFS for shared media

Obviously the Windows System partition wasn’t primary. So somehow, before installing Ubuntu, Windows was able to load from the 50GB logical partition, but this was broken by some change made during the Ubuntu install (Grub?).

Anyway, I decided to rework my partitions as follows:

[primary] 50GB NTFS for Windows System

[extended]

[logical] 2GB Linux Swap

[logical] 350GB Ext4 for Ubuntu

[logical] 100GB NTFS for Windows program installs

[logical] 450GB NTFS for shared media

I used the WinXP slipstream disk to wipe out my partition table and recreate it using these partitions. After installing XP and Ubuntu, I’m now able to boot into either OS without a problem. Phew!

I’m planning on using this blog primarily as a record for my own future reference: links/tools I find interesting, steps I took to accomplish an unfamiliar task, etc. I’m sure it will evolve to include other things going forward.

A note about the name of the blog…

I wanted to capture the idea of a quest for knowledge and understanding. Most other ideas I had were either either a little too esoteric, or were claimed by another Blogger user (even some of my favourite esoteric ones… bah!). I thought this title might lend a little geek/gamer cred to the blog, while still leaving room for the occasional post with a bit of a philosophical bent. I promise I’ll try to remain coherent in my ramblings…